Build Me Up
by 3.30am
Summary: In which Paige really does take shop (like she knew she should've) and Emily needs her help for the fashion show. Set sometime after season 1 episode 21.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's intro:_

_OK you guys I'm going to admit it, when Paige first came into the show in season one I was like 'who is this whiny, be-fringed, closeted, auto-aggressive perpetually unlikeable character with her hands all over Emily Fields?' and then I scowled at the screen and crossed my arms and didn't make eye contact and huffed myself into a near asthmatic fit every time she appeared. But then the 'If I say I'm gay ...' episode happened and my ice-queen heart just melted into a pool of empathy and repentance. And then when she returned in season two with the fastest-firing quip-revolver in the west and an amazing air of optimism and gayness and strength and self-assurance I was like 'who is this super-human queen of awesome and why doesn't she have her hands all over Emily Fields?'. So, in short, this a mostly AU (as in 'A'-less) story about how Paige McCullers won the heart of Emily Fields, by just being herself :)_

**Chapter 1**

The screeching whir of the wood plane drowned out only the quietest of Paige's thoughts. The hot, heady smell of singed wood filled the workshop, the billowing wood-dust catching in the bright sunlight and making the air feel incredibly thick. Paige pushed the heavy contraption one last time along the length of pine she was working before turning it off and resting it back on the bench. The base of her hand tingled slightly from the vibration after it had stopped. She puffed out a heavy breath and wiped her palm across her forehead, sweeping back her sweaty fringe from her eyes. It had grown too long, and was on its way to becoming a visual impairment.

Voices returned, now, in the quiet, drifting in through the windows and from the corridor. Paige found herself listening out for Emily's voice again, freezing with an almost super-human stillness when she thought she heard it, relaxing and shaking her head in admonishment when she realised the intonations weren't quite right. It was Emily's free-period right now; Paige tried to picture what she'd be doing with it, then quickly tried to not picture it, as not picturing Emily was something she'd been trying to train herself to do. She was doing OK with that, most days, but unseeing things she had actually seen - that was a lot harder. Things like beads of water dripping down the back of Emily's exposed neck as she pulled herself out of the pool on those strong arms; the dark lashes of Emily's slowly closing eyes as she inexplicably leaned in closer to Paige as if to kiss her, the elation that swelled up inside Paige's chest as she realised she had indeed been about to kiss her, as proved by the warm breath against her lips and reinforced by the soft brush of her tongue through the warmth and wetness of her mouth, the tightening of her fingers where they rested upon Paige's thigh -

Paige snapped herself out of it, blowing out a frustrated breath, irritated to have caught thinking about her _again_. She glared at the various objects on her workbench with directionless scorn, reminding herself of her own self-disparaging brand of therapy that mostly involved torturing herself with rapid-firing vignettes of less pleasant memories. Memories like that vacuous blonde Samara pushing the hair back behind Emily's perfect ears and the nauseating sight of Emily's enchanting smile and her bright eyes shining in earnest as she gazed back at her, followed quickly by the harsh words with which Emily efficiently ejected Paige from her life. And like therapy, the method had mixed results. It was painful and blunt and realistic, and left Paige feeling small and worthless, but was slowly allowing her to acknowledge the fact that she would feel that way forever unless she did something pretty drastic to change it. Paige considered it progress.

She began to work again with renewed concentration, so engrossed in her task that she didn't notice the bell ringing to signal the end of the school day. She worked on through, grateful for the distraction that the manual task provided, for the focused mindset that granted her those few precious minutes she could get to herself that weren't permeated with thoughts of Emily.

'McCullers, what the hell are you still doing here?'

Paige jumped at the interruption, the metal setsquare she had been holding clattering against the bench and the pencil mark she had been carefully making against a piece of word slipping into an exaggerated arc across the surface. Recovering from the intrusion she glanced at her watch before turning on the spot. She grimaced sheepishly. 'We had plans huh?' she asked, knowing the answer.

'We had plans,' Pru agreed, folding her arms, 'big plans,' she elaborated, 'plans that involved making _me_ look fabulous for the only date I've been asked out on _all year_.'

'You're projecting your tragedy to the whole school you know,' Paige observed, noting that Pru hadn't fully stepped into the room yet and voices still echoed ominously in the corridor.

Pru glanced behind her before stepping forwards, turning briefly to shut the workshop door.

Paige opened her mouth to speak again but was silenced by a raised flat-palmed gesture from her best friend. 'Big plans that you promised you'd not forget about to make up for the fact that you cancelled last minute two Thursdays ago and I was stuck watching that substandard Sandra Bullock romcom _on my own_.'

Paige cringed, screwing up her face in apologetic remorse, the guilt swirling in her stomach as she recalled her reason for cancelling on Pru was just to earn a mere extra half an hour with Emily after swim practice in which they'd made out twice, only for Paige to bolt when she'd thought she'd heard someone coming, garbling some ludicrous excuse about a sick aunt and a missing cat.

'But you would clearly rather spend time with ...' Pru peered sceptically over the rims of her glasses, 'some ... irregular lengths of timber than with your best friend. Who, may I remind you, was the only girl who stuck by you during your 'Ghost World' phase; the girl who was almost ostracised by your entire family for taking the wrap for the ownership of the bottle of vodka that you had an 'allergic reaction' to and spent two days with your head in the toilet; the girl who queued up for half an hour at 2am for that dozy, selectively-deaf attendant at the 24 hour store to give me a bag of ice after you'd decided to pierce your own ears with a hat pin _that you found_; the girl who donated her own bikini top that time you lost yours coming up from a dive at the beach and wanted to go and get an ice cream ...'

'Alright, stop it_, Jesus_,' Paige said, alarmed at both how many occasions Pru could recall and the speed at which she was able to recount them. 'I'm a terrible friend. Hang me, quarter me, whip me naked through the street of London but just ... keep your voice down,' she peered nervously through the glazed panel in the door. She did not need anyone to be reminded of the questionable years of her early adolescence.

Pru looked thoughtful for a moment before relenting. 'I'll forgive you,' she began, 'if you let me borrow your green dress, the one with the lace.'

Paige frowned for a second before shrugging. 'Deal, I guess,' she muttered, rubbing an eraser against the wood to remove the mark she'd made. 'Though I don't know what good your friendship is if it's just a way to bully me into compliance with a ... quite frankly _disconcertingly_ comprehensive list of my former embarrassments.'

'Ah but if we forget our past, how can we expect to learn from it?' Pru asked her.

Paige rolled her eyes. 'I'm growing tired of you.'

Pru's self-satisfied smirk was wiped from her face as Mona Vanderwaal burst importantly into the room with all of her usual regard for anyone's privacy or personal space.

'Hi Paige,' she announced in such an amicable way that it almost implied they were friends and interacted on a regular basis - a charade that went entirely counter to Mona's usual approach to Paige, which could only be described as an attitude of barely concealed contempt.

'Uh ... hi Mona,' Paige responded with a half-shrug and a bewildered glance in Pru's direction.

'You're just the person I wanted to see,' Mona continued, a hint of excitement in her voice.

'I ... I am?' Paige asked, her gaze catching the fan of fliers clutched in Mona's arms about half a second before Mona thrust them forwards practically into Paige's face.

'Fashion show,' Mona said, by way of an explanation. 'Two weeks from now.'

Paige frowned, tentatively plucking a flier from deck Mona had presented. '... right,' she began slowly, 'and this affects me how?'

Mona laughed, touching Paige lightly on the arm as if her question was absurd. 'Because you're building the stage, _silly_,' she admonished.

Paige blinked. 'I'm doing what now?'

'Well, you and the rest of the drop-outs, I mean ... 'workshop students',' Mona corrected herself with icy precision. 'It'll be a lovely team-building exercise.'

'This is an interesting tactic, Mona, if your goal is to actually get me onside.' Paige noted. 'Sociopathic denigration has always been such a _great_ motivational tool.'

'I'm so glad,' Mona said, unruffled by Paige's stubbornness, 'because your Father was _so pleased_ to learn that you'd be finally be earning some extra credit.'

Paige visibly baulked at the revelation. 'My father?'

'He was presented with a list of the people involved at the most recent PTA meeting of course,' Mona told her before softening slightly and rubbing Paige's arm encouragingly. 'Poor Paigey, the college offers haven't been exactly rolling in have they? And it's not like you're the swim team anchor anymore ...'

'It's bold to break this news to me in a room full of so many sharp objects Mona,' Paige said, through gritted teeth.

'Of course I've run it all past Mr Tamborelli, who's _equally _delighted that the varsity swim team is finally giving something back to the school community,' Mona continued, unflinchingly.

'You've been to my Father _and _the Principal about this already?' Paige asked, slightly dumb-founded by Mona's efficiency.

'Of course,' Mona answered, a trace of surprise slipping into her tone, 'didn't want you wriggling out of it did I? Goodness you _are _slow today aren't you. Maybe it's the fumes ...' she glanced theatrically around the room with mock concern, 'should I open a window?'

'Only if you're going to jump out of it,' Paige answered, folding her arms crossly.

'Of course your friend Emily will be one of the models,' Mona said, ignoring Paige's suggestion. 'You wouldn't want to disappoint her, would you?' she added, a smile flicking across her mouth with such remarkable insincerity that Paige's blood ran cold. Her brain fizzed with sudden activity. What did she know? What _could_ she know? Had Emily told anyone? _Had she seen them_?

Paige clenched her jaw, determined not to react in any way that might incriminate her in front of either of the girls in the room. She resorted to glaring mutely in Mona's direction.

'Great then,' Mona said, taking Paige's silence as some sort of agreement, 'there's a formal meeting tomorrow at lunchtime. I'll see you there.'

Before Paige could properly organise her thoughts Mona had left the room. Paige's nervous gaze fell on Pru, who had witnessed the entire exchange with the expression of someone who didn't quite grasp the full extent of what was going on. 'Did you seriously just agree to that?' she asked, staring blankly at the space Mona had just vacated.

Paige sighed and began clearing the work bench busily to avoid looking at her friend.

'Paige?' Pru prompted.

'Well you heard,' Paige said, unplugging the plane roughly and wrapping the flex tightly around the handle, 'I don't have any other choice. She's managed to go straight to my Dad via the Principal ... my hands are kinda tied.'

Pru observed her. 'You're lying. There's something else.'

Paige turned around to meet Pru's gaze, shifting uncomfortably under the scrutiny, noting soberly the drawbacks of having a best friend that still adored you despite seeing you wet yourself at the sudden appearance of a clown at two separate birthday parties. She had thought about telling Pru about Emily. There were even a few occasions when she had started to, but all her sentences had collapsed in on themselves before they were even halfway out of her mouth, and she had just sighed sadly and introduced a clumsy segue into a different subject. Lying to Pru felt even worse than lying to her parents, because, unlike her parents, she was almost certain that Pru wouldn't reject her, or renounce their friendship, or pray for her soul to be saved, and yet she was still too much of a coward to say it out-loud to anyone, even Pru, because saying it out loud meant changing the world. Just like all the times before it, now just wasn't the time. So she lied again, and tried to push down the nauseous feeling of guilt that it always inspired.

'No there isn't,' Paige insisted. 'Mona's just a bully. It's worse to stand in her way.'

'You know who else is a bully?' Pru asked.

'Don't start that again,' Paige said tiredly, not wishing to get into another debate about how Paige needed to learn how to stand up to her Dad.

Pru knew when not to push it, and she backed down. 'Alright,' she relented, although Paige suspected that it may have just been because the offer of the green dress would've been retracted had she managed to get Paige in a worse mood than the one she was in already.

* * *

Pru smoothed down the front of the dress and regarded her reflection with a small satisfied smile.

'He's going to go nuts for you Prune juice,' Paige told her, propping herself up on her elbows from her reclining position on the bed to get a better look.

Pru did a half-turn in front of the mirror, examining her back-view as much as the restrictions of her human skeleton allowed. 'This is such a nice dress Paige,' she said, 'maybe this fashion show isn't so opposed to your interests after all,' she noted.

'Please,' Paige said with an eye-roll, 'my Mom picked that dress out for me to wear to my Aunt Miranda's eightieth birthday because the last time I wore jeans and converse to a family event she asked my parents when they were going to let me move back home. I'm about as interested in fashion as I am in the plant life of the mesozoic era.'

Pru's reflection regarded her uncertainly.

Paige shook her head, 'Sorry, I fell asleep in front of the National Geographic channel last night.'

'I'm surprised your Dad allows that kind of blasphemy in his house.'

Paige flicked a playful hand-gesture in at the reflection. 'He's a church deacon, Pru, not an eighteenth century quaker.'

Pru held her hands up in apology, her smile still evident. 'So you were telling me how much you loved fashion.'

Paige sighed. 'I love fashion about as much as I love Mona,' she said glumly, jumping slightly at the vibration of the phone in her pocket. Extending her leg awkwardly in her position to fish it out, she almost dropped it immediately when she saw she had received a text from Emily.

'Someone you don't want to talk to?' Pru asked, noticing her sudden strangeness.

'... something like that,' she muttered, opening the message.

_**Hanna told me you're helping out with the show?**_

Paige re-read the message a few times, her eyes darting animatedly across the screen. She chewed absently at her thumbnail then looked up to ensure that Pru was still engrossed in her own reflection before deciding to answer.

_**Yeah, Mona can be very persuasive when she wants to be...**_

Emily's reply came after about twenty seconds, and Paige felt the familiar of mixture of Emily-related excitement and anxiety as she thumbed open the new text.

_**It'll be fun to work together, I'm looking forward to it :)**_

Paige's eyes widened slightly, her stomach clenching in that strange way it only ever did around Emily. She shook her head slightly, silently but sternly telling herself not to read too much into the message. Emily was just a friendly person. And moreover she'd made it abundantly clear that she only wanted to be friends with Paige. Besides, she was with Samara now; Paige was just someone that it was easier to be nice to than to bear a grudge against. Satisfied with her analysis, she chose not the reply to the text and stowed her phone back into her pocket.

Removing the phone from her immediate line of sight did not, however, stop Paige from thinking about the text all evening, distracting her to the point that Pru left with a pair of cream-coloured pumps that she didn't even ask for permission to take; nor did it stop Paige from reaching for the phone every few hours in the night, turning over restlessly in her bed, unable to sleep, the light from the screen lighting up her face as she reread the text over and over, allowing herself to smile the small smile of someone who just, for the briefest moment, was made to feel like they were worthwhile.

_Sorry there was no Emily in this chapter, but I can assure you that she'll be all over the next one! I'd love to know what you think so leave me a review and tell me if you're so inclined :)_


	2. Chapter 2

_I'm in the process of being slightly overwhelmed by the response to this story - you've made me feel so special! I'm so glad that you enjoyed my first chapter, I'll have to work hard now to keep you all interested!_

_Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favourited and followed. Reviews are seriously my winter sunshine, so please please know how much it means when you drop by and say something :)_

_And to the person that recognised that I'm British before checking my profile, I thank you profusely for crediting this to a 'dry, quick sense of humour' rather than for the persistent malapropism that I've saturated the entire first chapter with: calling it 'workshop' instead of 'woodshop'. You must've all noticed it but you were all way too polite to call me out and correct me, which I find all kinds of adorable. You guys, I totally thought that was what it was called! Woodshop though? Sounds kinda weird. I mean ... wood-chop maybe ... Ah well in my school they called it 'resistant materials' which makes even less sense. Like, resistant to what? My advances?_

_Anyway, now I've got that out of the way, have some more story. I haven't had a lot of time to proof-read, so I boldly and unashamedly claim ownership of all mistakes._

**Chapter 2**

Paige was nearly falling asleep by lunchtime. Her restless night hadn't done her any favours - she'd nearly dozed off to the iambic pentameter of a particularly tiresome Shakespearean sonnet in English to be jolted back into consciousness by a jab in the side from Pru and an accompanying note that read 'please close your mouth', for the same fatigue to strike again in chemistry, her exhausted collapse this time knocking a beaker of saline solution all over the desk, over her own work and over her lab partners shoes, and seeing as her lab partner was Jenna Marshall, she hadn't quite managed to shake the sense of impending doom that her reaction had instilled.

The meeting with Mona only served to make her feel even grumpier, and she dragged her heels as she made her way down the hall, unconcerned about punctuality, to arrive once the meeting was already ten minutes in. Mona eyeballed her as she walked into the room and flopped unceremoniously down onto the only vacant chair which she realised too late also happened to be the chair directly adjacent to Emily Fields.

'Nice of you to join us, Paige,' Mona said, her expression conveying the opposite.

'You're welcome,' Paige answered, stifling a yawn and trying not to look slightly to her right where Emily's bare thighs were in plain sight thanks to the shortness of the denim skirt she had chosen to wear.

'Seeing as you've missed the _entire_ initiation session,' Mona laboured the point, 'I expect you'll have trouble keeping up. So raise your hand if you have any questions relating to the subjects we've already covered.' She held up a sheet of bullet-pointed topics, the first 5 of which were ticked.

'Yeah I have a question,' Paige answered, sitting up slightly in her seat, 'if you're here then who's making sure that it's still winter in Narnia?'

A small, effeminate snort to her right grabbed her attention, and she turned her head slightly to see Emily visibly suppressing a laugh. Forgetting herself briefly, she stared in bewilderment at the girl, momentarily dumb-founded by the beauty of her delicate features, the slight crookedness of her smile and the elegant curvature of her cheekbones, a strange sense of pride swelling in her chest as she realised her offhand comment had been the cause of this incredible natural event that she was now witnessing - Emily Fields smiling. If Paige had been looking out upon a meteor shower over the grand canyon, she couldn't have looked more thunderstruck.

Emily's lips moved as Paige stared at them. 'Don't let Mona get to you,' Emily was saying softly, her expression gentle. 'Here,' she said, offering her own copy of Mona's topic list to share.

Paige scooted her chair slightly closer to see, immediately regretting it as it meant she was suddenly able to catch the scent of Emily's perfume, and the faint fragrance of the shampoo she had used that morning, and when Emily leaned in even closer to speak to her, Paige almost had to move away.

'How come you're getting involved with all of this anyway?' Emily asked.

'You know ...' Paige struggled to find words, 'I've always been a fan of ...' she glanced down at the sheet of paper in Emily's hand, '_muted Autumn hues_,' she read. 'Jeez, that sounds like a 90's grunge band doesn't it?'

Emily smiled again, and Paige felt like the most important person in the world.

Mona cleared the throat pointedly, casting a stern look towards the pair. Emily sat back up straight in her seat, sufficiently berated by the warning. Paige glared back at Mona before reluctantly leaning back as well, away from Emily, immediately missing her closeness.

It didn't last long. Only a few minutes passed before Emily sat forward again, this time placing her hand lightly upon Paige's knee to get her attention. She succeeded. In fact, there wasn't a single molecule in the fibre of Paige's being that hadn't jumped to attention at the gentle presence.

'Listen Paige,' Emily said with a whispered urgency. 'I'm sorry about how we left things.'

Paige tried to focus on Emily's words, but the feeling of the heat of Emily's hand through her jeans was almost eclipsing the ability of every other faculty she possessed. 'Uhm ...' she just about managed, 'it's OK.'

'No it's not OK,' Emily countered, sliding her hand slowly from Paige's knee, the faint tremor from the friction it caused making Paige clench her fists, her fingernails digging sharply into her palms. 'I was angry and I said some ...thoughtless things,' Emily continued. She dipped her head slightly, making sure that Paige was looking her square in the eyes before she said 'You didn't deserve them.'

Paige shook her head softly. _I didn't deserve __you_, she wanted to say, but couldn't, and so didn't. Her gaze moved past Emily in avoidance to find Spencer Hastings staring plainly back at her, making no effort to disguise the fact that she had been watching the whole exchange. Caught off guard, Paige jerked sharply away from Emily, making the girl jump slightly at her sudden movement.

Emily looked around in confusion for her gaze to also land upon Spencer, who merely crossed her arms when Emily looked at her before turning her attention back to Mona.

Paige's heart thrummed fast in her chest. _Did Spencer know as well? _Was there anyone that Emily _hadn't_ told?

'Right, everyone into groups,' Mona barked abruptly, forcing Paige's attention away from Spencer and Emily. The congregation stood up slowly around her and Paige waited for Emily to stand before reluctantly heaving herself out of her own chair.

'Spencer, Hannah, Aria, Emily,' Mona reeled off the names, 'over here,' she pointed to where Emily and Paige were stood. The girls all shuffled over, grouping around Emily in that familiar way, in the way Paige always used to see Emily - through her impenetrable force field of friends.

Spencer purposely knocked shoulders with Paige as she passed, causing her torso to flail backwards at an awkward angle. 'Hey!' she said crossly, resisting the urge to shove the girl back.

'...Spencer,' Emily said, uncertainly, like she wasn't sure what was happening but didn't like the look of it anyway.

'Sorry,' Spencer said, her tone flat. 'Didn't see you there.'

'I'm sure,' Paige answered, folding her arms and rooting herself to the spot.

'Tell me Paige,' Spencer continued, rising to the unspoken challenge, 'have you administered any more impromptu baptisms lately?'

'_Spencer_,' Emily hissed warningly, now sounding sure she had been right about not liking the look of it.

'What?' Spencer asked with a shrug, as if her question perfectly reasonable.

Paige wondered if it was possible to hate herself any more than she already did in that moment. She still had nightmares about that night. The force of Emily's body rearing beneath her hand as she pushed down, the sound of the desperate splashing as her arms pin-wheeled frantically, slapping the water upwards to fleck lightly upon Paige's face and arms, the feeling of being absolutely in control of the thing that had tormented her for as long as she could remember, to realise too late that it was still just controlling her, like it always had. Speechless, she just looked down at her feet.

Fortunately Mona broke through her self-pitying fug of misery and loneliness, as well as breaking the confused stares of Hannah and Aria and the respectively defiant and incredulous ones of Spencer and Emily, by presenting her with her own copy of the list she must've given out at the beginning. 'I've made some notes for you on this one Paige,' Mona pointed out, 'just in case you had a bit of trouble following it.'

Paige snatched it from her grasp. 'Weird,' she said, scanning it quickly for dramatic effect, 'it just says 'Mona is great' over and over again in your handwriting.'

Mona smiled a poisonous smile at her. 'What are you doing in this group anyway Paigey?' she asked. 'This is the _models_ group,' she gestured around her. 'You're over there,' she pointed to the other side of the room, 'with ... the help.'

Paige clenched her jaw. 'Sorry,' she began, 'I thought this was the dead-behind-the-eyes-automatons group. My mistake.' She considered shoulder-barging Spencer back in retaliation on her way past, but decided against it.

She also decided to ignore the faint plea she heard Emily make for her to come back, half-certain that she had imagined it anyway.

* * *

'So how did it go then,' Paige asked, flopping onto her bed and bouncing slightly as the mattress resisted her weight. 'Tell me all - no item omitted, no matter how sordid or incriminating.' Between lessons and the fashion show meeting Paige hadn't had a chance to ask Pru properly about her date at school.

'It went really well,' Pru answered, following Paige into her bedroom and sitting down, slightly more gracefully, on the edge of her bed. 'I really like him ... I think it went ... well, it actually went ... it was OK,' Pru concluded finally.

Paige frowned at the rundown. 'It either went really well or OK,' she noted, 'it can't be both.'

'Well, dinner went really well and the movie was good and he walked me home and leant me his jacket when I got cold,' Pru listed.

'Sounds good so far,' Paige observed.

'But then when we got to my front door he leaned in and I thought he was going to kiss me,' she paused, shifting slightly with embarrassment.

Paige quirked an eyebrow. 'And?'

'So I leaned up to like ... _accept_ the kiss, but it turned out he wasn't trying to kiss me at all. He was trying to get a better look at this apparently 'really rare moth' that decided to land on my door. So ... as I leant up he sort of whacked me out of the way with his chin.'

Paige's hands rushed up to her mouth to disguise her amusement. 'You .. uh,' she composed herself slightly, 'you got chinned?'

'I got chinned,' Pru confirmed, glumly. 'In the face.'

Paige snorted. 'Well, that's what you get for dating someone with such a ruggedly handsome chiselled jaw. I told you not to date a quarterback.'

'He was so embarrassed,' Pru continued. 'He tried to kiss me then, but I was already digging in my bag for my keys so I could retreat into my house and, like, _flush my head down the toilet_ so he just bumped into the top of my head.' Pru gazed sadly into space. 'We just ended up hi-fiving in the end.'

Paige grinned. 'You got a goodnight hi-five?'

'Romantic huh? What about you anyway,' Pru asked, changing the focus from herself, 'I haven't heard anything about your love-life since that sham-date with Sean.'

Paige cleared her throat awkwardly and sat up slightly. 'You haven't heard anything because there's nothing to report,' she stated as nonchalantly as possible.

Pru narrowed her eyes at her. 'So all those times you blew me off last month for family dinners, last-minute swim meets and visits to Aunts that _I know full well _don't exist weren't just elaborate excuses to sneak off to some secret romantic tryst with a mystery hottie?'

Paige clenched her fists anxiously into the bed sheets. 'I honestly have no idea what you mean,' was the only response she could manage. A lie. And, worse than that somehow, was the fact that she knew that Pru knew she was lying. The girl could always see straight through her instantly. It rendered it almost absurd that Pru could pick up on Paige's specific brand of ill-considered and unsubstantiated fibs so easily and yet not see the biggest one of all, the one she lived every day. She often wondered if Pru just confronted her directly about it whether she'd admit it or not. Sometimes she just wished that she would, because surely it would be easier than saying it out-loud herself. But right now almost everything seemed easier than that.

'Come on Paige,' Pru implored, her voice conveying almost a fatigue at having to work so hard for the information, 'I _saw_ your face light up every time you got a text from that unnamed number. And I know that you can barely stand to be in the same room as your parents at the moment, let alone have six formal dinners a week with them.' Pru sighed in frustration as Paige just stared back at her with the wide eyes of someone who couldn't possibly imagine how they'd been found out. Pru changed tactic. 'Look, whoever they are,' she began, 'just ... if they're important to you and you care about them then you don't have to keep them a secret, OK?'

Paige sighed at the gentleness of Pru's appeal, feeling like she should give her at least _something _in response. 'OK ...' she relented, 'I _was_ seeing someone ... kind of. But ...' she ran a hand through her hair and thought about how best to word it, 'it didn't work out. They um ... I ... I wasn't ready for that kind of relationship,' she managed in the end. It wasn't a lie, for once. But it still didn't make her feel any better.

'What kind of relationship is that?' Pru asked, her interrogation clearly not over yet.

'I don't know,' Paige snapped, 'a serious one I guess.'

Pru frowned, and Paige recognised it as the brief moment of processing and consolidation before she launched into more questions.

'It doesn't matter anyway,' Paige interjected pre-emptively before they started, 'they're seeing someone else now so it's ... it's like totally over,' she tried unsuccessfully to keep the sadness from her voice.

'It's totally over but you're still not going to tell me who it is,' Pru summarised, unimpressed.

Paige paused for a second, looking down at her fingers that were nervously playing with the seam of a pillow case before looking up again. 'Yeah, that's correct.'

Pru huffed. 'Well that's not really good enough is it? They'd better be like ... a government operative for you to be being this covert about it all.'

Paige forced a smile, but she felt hot and sick and prickly all over. She desperately wanted to tell Pru that she'd fallen rather spectacularly hard for a beautiful, kind, unspeakably sexy and pretty much perfect girl, and then managed to mess it all up in the usual dramatic fashion that she always managed to mess things up, and then she wanted to cry a little bit, and mope a little bit, and feel gratuitously sorry for herself for a while, and have Pru comfort her and say nice things like 'it's not so bad,' and 'cheer up,' and all the other useless but well-intentioned platitudes that best friends are supposed to say when you inflict chaos and pain and heartache on yourself due to your specific and inexorable ability to stand directly in the way of your own happiness.

She took a deep breath.

'Pru?' she asked softly. The girl looked up from the magazine she had begun flicking through in Paige's silence. Paige swallowed, looking straight into the deep, kind, trusting eyes of the girl she had been best friends with since kindergarten.

'Yeah?' Pru prompted, breaking the silence that had begun to stretch between them.

_No. _She couldn't do it.

'Um ... nothing,' Paige said, 'nevermind.'

Pru fixed her with an unreadable gaze for a few long seconds before sighing sadly and looking back down at the magazine. 'God, when Botox goes wrong it _really _does go wrong doesn't it?' she mused after a few moments, studying a double page spread detailing bungled attempts at plastic surgery. She lifted the magazine up to her face for closer inspection. 'Seriously, if it didn't say her name underneath that picture you could _easily_ mistake her for the lost piece of concept art that inspired the make-up forDr Frank-N-Furter'.

Paige used the distraction to blink hard a few times to rid her eyes of their brimming tears and tried to swallow down the lump in her throat.


End file.
